The latest news from the Centre for Diet and Activity Research
- What shall we do about diet and physical activity? Research and policy meeting, 9 October 2013
- Help shape CEDAR’s research: lay member sought for advisory group
- Government announces investment and nationwide drive to promote cycling
- Recent CEDAR publications
- Seminar, 25 September: Prof June Stevens, Gillings School of Global Public Health
- askfuse: UKCRC Centre in the northeast launches research & evaluation service
What shall we do about diet and physical activity?
Research and policy meeting, 9 October
What shall we do about diet and physical activity? will explore our emerging science in diet and physical activity and discuss its implications for policy and practice. The event also marks the successful renewal of CEDAR as part of the UKCRC Centres of Excellence in Public Health Research initiative.
- When: 9 October, 9am – 3.15pm
- Where: Downing College Cambridge
The day will be interactive with plenty of time for discussion, and the opportunity to present posters about public health programmes, interventions and evaluations. It will feature presentations by CEDAR researchers and leading policymakers, within topics including health-promoting environments; the socioeconomics of diet and food choice; and active travel.
For more information and to register, please visit: www.cedar.iph.cam.ac.uk/research-policy-meeting-oct13
Please note that we are now prioritising the remaining places for those working in policy and practice. If you are an academic interested in attending, please email Oliver Francis on ocf26@medschl.cam.ac.uk .
Help shape CEDAR’s research: lay member sought for advisory group
CEDAR is seeking applications from members of the public for a vacant lay position on its International Strategic Advisory Group (ISAG), which provides advice on the overall direction of the centre.
It is anticipated that the successful candidate will be able to think strategically, have experience of participating in formal meetings and be confident in expressing views in a mixed group of lay people and professionals.
An understanding of public health issues and experience of providing a public perspective within a research context would be desirable.
Further information about the role can be found at www.cedar.iph.cam.ac.uk/work-with-cedar/vacancies/
The closing date is 1 September 2013.
Government announces investment and nationwide drive to promote cycling
The Government today (12 August) announced a £77 million investment in cycling to be divided between Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Newcastle, Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford and Norwich; as well as £17 million funding for cycling in national parks.
Full details of the announcement can be found at: www.gov.uk/government/news/government-shifts-cycling-up-a-gear
Finding ways to promote active travel can help tackle the physical activity challenge, and these new investments may present important opportunities for research and evaluation into the most effective methods of encouraging cycling.
CEDAR is studying active travel in a number of research projects, including Commuting and Health in Cambridge, iConnect, and Changing Commutes, which span both our physical activity and public health and public health modelling themes.
Two hot-off-the-press publications from CEDAR look at the impact of cycling infrastructure and other factors on cycling uptake:
- Patterns and predictors of changes in active commuting over 12 months. Preventive Medicine. Jenna Panter, Simon Griffin, Alice Dalton, David Ogilvie.
- Who uses new walking and cycling infrastructure and how? Longitudinal results from the UK iConnect study. Preventive Medicine. Anna Goodman, Shannon Sahlqvist, David Ogilvie, on behalf of the iConnect consortium.
Recent CEDAR publications
The following are some more of the recent publications by CEDAR authors:
- Characterising food environment exposure at home, at work, and along commuting journeys using data on adults in the UK (Open Access)
- Creating ‘obesogenic realities’; do our methodological choices make a difference when measuring the food environment? (Open Access)
- Determinants of Change in Children’s Sedentary Time (Open Access)
- Economic determinants of diet in older adults: systematic review (Open Access)
- Individual, socio-cultural and environmental predictors of uptake and maintenance of active commuting in children: longitudinal results from the SPEEDY study (Open Access)
- Neighbourhood, Route and Workplace-Related Environmental Characteristics Predict Adults’ Mode of Travel to Work (Open Access)
- Predictors of change differ for moderate and vigorous intensity physical activity and for weekdays and weekends: a longitudinal analysis (Open Access)
- Synthesising evidence for equity impacts of population-based physical activity interventions: a pilot study (Open Access)
- Using spatial equity analysis in the process evaluation of environmental interventions to tackle obesity: the healthy towns programme in England (Open Access)
- Walking and cycling to work despite reporting an unsupportive environment: insights from a mixed-method exploration of counterintuitive findings (Open Access)
You can search nearly 150 CEDAR scientific papers by author, journal, study, title and abstract keywords on our publications database at www.cedar.iph.cam.ac.uk/publications
A list of all Open Access publications can be found at: www.cedar.iph.cam.ac.uk/publications/tag/open-access
Seminar, 25 September: Prof June Stevens, Gillings School of Global Public Health
All are invited to a seminar with:
June Stevens, Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology, AICR/WCRF Chaired Professor, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina.
When: Wednesday 25 September 2013, 12.30 – 1.30pm.
Where: MRL meeting rooms 1 & 2, Level 4 Institute of Metabolic Sciences, Addenbrooke’s Treatment Centre (ATC).
About June. Dr June Stevens is Chair of the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the American Institute for Cancer Research Distinguished Professor. She is an obesity epidemiologist with a large research program focusing on the causes, consequences, and prevention of obesity in different populations. Dr Stevens has served as an obesity expert for the US National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Institute of Medicine and the World Health Organization.
askfuse: UKCRC Centre in the northeast launches research & evaluation service
Our fellow UKCRC Public Health Research Centre of Excellence, Fuse, has recently launched a new service to support policymakers and practitioners in their research and evaluation needs.
askfuse provides a service that:
- helps partners identify how the evidence-base may apply in their context
- makes best use of existing local data and helps in its interpretation
- undertakes rapid evaluations of local public health and community initiatives
- provides outputs that are independent, high quality and in plain English
- will broker access to research expertise across the five NE Universities and beyond
- helps showcase and publicise good practice
- builds long term working collaboration
And it’s not just available for those based in the northeast. Read more and watch a short video about the service here: www.fuse.ac.uk/askfuse
Sign up for future issues here.
Questions and comments to Oliver Francis: ocf26@medschl.cam.ac.uk